Tony Abbott

6 days ago | hockeywilderness.com | Tony Abbott

"Dolla Bill Kirill" is about to live up to the name. So long as Kirill Kaprizov signs in Minnesota, he's going to be an incredibly wealthy man sometime in July. Minnesota Wild owner Mr. Craig Leipold has vowed that no one will pay Kaprizov more money than Minnesota will. However, lately, it's possible that no NHL team will pay any player more than the Wild are preparing to pay their superstar. On Monday's 32 Thoughts podcast, Elliotte Friedman repeated some hot goss he got from NHL sources.

1 week ago | hockeywilderness.com | Tony Abbott

Somehow, the biggest lightning rod in the Minnesota Wild's abbreviated playoff run was the player with the team's third-fewest minutes. But that's what fans will focus on when a team takes Marco Rossi, their second-leading scorer in the regular season, and plays him for 11 minutes and 8 seconds per night. For context, that's less than Marat Khusnutdinov, a fourth-line center with seven points in 57 games, got during the regular season.

1 week ago | hockeywilderness.com | Tony Abbott

As a human with a father, I was chatting with my dad about the Minnesota Wild's series between Games 5 and 6. We both lamented the back-to-back overtime losses that turned a 2-1 series lead into a 3-2 deficit. Was it a bummer? Sure was. But it wasn't until he said something that I figured out why the series' outcome was so frustrating. "It'd be nice to get into the second round," he said, "but looking at the roster, they're not going much further than that, right?" I didn't agree.

2 weeks ago | zonecoverage.com | Tony Abbott

Kevin O’Connell‘s track record with quarterbacks is nearly unimpeachable. This is a guy who made Josh Dobbs look great for a game or two. But if there’s one thing that’s really his calling card, it’s rehabilitating quarterbacks who struggled on the East Coast, backed up on the West Coast, and are named “Sam.”Given that, Sam Howell seems the obvious choice to succeed Sam Darnold as the non-J.J. McCarthy starting-caliber quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings.

2 weeks ago | hockeywilderness.com | Tony Abbott

The State of Hockey woke up on Wednesday morning, hungover from the realization that all this has happened before, and is happening again. The plucky Minnesota Wild built a 2-1 lead, only to find themselves unable to put away their opponent and fall behind in the series 3-2. Nothing is different than their previous two playoff series, and while the Wild still have Games 6 and 7 to prove those feelings are dead wrong, their track record isn't encouraging.